What's reality?
by a simple space nerd
Summary: "What'll it be, Clarke?" ALIE's sympathetic voice is in Clarke's ear and she doesn't know what to do anymore. (AU of the City of Light, Bellarke.)


**A/N: Thank you for reading, let me know what you think! Reviews feed my muse! This is pretty AU, pre-City of Light.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own the 100. If I did, I'd own more than one cat. :) (though my one cat is lovely.)**

* * *

The ark never comes to earth. Abby radios reporting tearfully that they've fixed the oxygen fault, and then the signal drops out, leaving Raven and Clarke staring in shock.

The ark never radios in again.

Clarke doesn't cry, even when she watches something _huge_ fall from the sky miles and miles from the 100's camp. Bellamy grips her shoulders and her breath catches and two people scream, but Clarke doesn't cry. She's too busy keeping everybody alive and calm for tears.

* * *

Trikru is enraged and Lincoln warns she and Bellamy that they will attack camp unless they step in, so Clarke meets with the healer, Nyko, and talks with him. Nyko does not want war, and neither does she. (Indra is his leader, and she might, and Clarke worries that Bellamy is of a similar frame of mind.)

Nyko pulls her hood over her eyes and Clarke of the Sky People walks into Polis with her back straight and knives hidden.

Lexa is the commander and she narrows her eyes when Clarke asks for a private audience. When she draws her hood back and reveals her blonde hair, Lexa's eyes curve into what might be a smile and she puts up a hand to stop her bald advisor from attacking.

Lexa doesn't kill her, and Clarke leaves Polis with a smile and an burning arm.

(Bellamy is furious and yells at her and grips her arm tightly until she yelps and pulls away and then he's all concern and big brown eyes and Clarke feels slightly faint as he wraps strong arms around her. Octavia smiles for the first time in days and she winks at Clarke.)

The first cabins are built soon after, jagged and small but sturdy. Clarke gets a med bay and goes with Nyko, his friend Atticus, Monty, and Octavia on a three day trip to gather herbs and finds a moment to sketch out the waterfall they stumble across. By the time the air has grown so cold the teens can see their breath fogging in the air, they have built thirteen cabins.

Clarke thinks it's progress. Bellamy thinks it'll have to do. They've been on the ground five months.

* * *

Bellamy storms into the med bay one day as Clarke is washing her hands, raging about Lincoln. She's confused, as the two men are friends now, but quickly picks up why.

Clarke calms him down and he stares at her, all heaving chest and crackling eyes, and there is a tension in the air that Clarke had almost forgotten existed. She blinks and tells him that Lincoln knows what he's doing and Octavia's a big girl and they're happy together. (She doesn't think it's her _words_ that help.)

Octavia races into the dropship a month later, squealing. Clarke looks up from her patient with the flu and laughs. Octavia grabs her arms and dances with her around the room and Clarke spends the evening grinning at her friend's excitement over the iron loop around her finger.

Lincoln comes and thanks Clarke and Clarke doesn't bother pretending she doesn't know why.

Lincoln and Octavia move in with the former delinquents after weeks and weeks of begging and bartering and blackmail, and Bellamy smiles more often which in turn makes Clarke laugh more which makes everyone happier in general. It's a win-win.

* * *

Camp 100, as the delinquents have taken to calling it sadly in remembrance of the dead, opens it's gates and listen with rapt attention to a group of travelling grounders, who tell tales of the icy nation to the north and the flat plains to the east and the warm sands down south. Clarke's feet ache to explore those lands and her fingers itch for more drawing material, but she catches Bellamy's eye and her heart rate slows. If his frown is anything to go by, he knows how much she longs to explore, but she smiles at him and he eases.

The warm feeling in Clarke's chest starts to drown out the songs that the grounder sang, those that stay in her mind. It's not so bad.

* * *

Clarke travels to Polis again, bringing Bellamy, and she takes a seat as the thirteenth clan. Two assassination attempts later, people stop sneering at her appearance. Bellamy is warming up to the place too, and he accepts the flower a little girl from Lake Clan offers him with a smile. Raven and Finn laugh and smile at each other and Finn kisses her cheek. Clarke's smile slips a bit until Bellamy tucks the flower into her hair. (Octavia roars with raucous laughter and then blushes when Lincoln throws a flower at her in retaliation for ruining the moment. His smile for Clarke is softer and Clarke blushes too, though she isn't sure why.)

Clarke meets Prince Roan of Azgeda when he starts a fight with Monroe. She likes him immediately. He tries to kill her, and she tries to kill him, and the whole thing somehow ends with them shaking hands as Monroe and Bellamy stare. She is glad that someone in Azgeda doesn't hate her, even if he is technically banished and in disgrace. (It's the thought that counts, right?)

* * *

Summer is amazing. Summer is fun. Summer is dangerous. Clarke draws until she's used up four pencils and two sketchbooks, the kids visit the watering hole every other day, and Clarke thinks she can probably treat sunburn and heatstroke in her sleep. Bellamy gets mauled by a panther which Clarke kills, and is left with three raking scars across his chest. Clarke's arm is ripped open by a _moving_ _plant_ , which is really scary enough without the _huge freaking thorns._ (This is what Jasper says, anyways.) Monroe gets a nasty scar on her cheek, Harper catches the fever and almost dies, three kids actually _do_ die, and Octavia gets her foot torn open by an eel.

Clarke likes Autumn better.

In fact, she likes Autumn best.

She likes the colours and the leaves and the brisk air. She likes the way she pulls the sweater Bellamy got her from Polis low over her fingertips, the way the younger kids have rosy cheeks and red noses, the way Nathan always wears his beanie and new gloves and sips tea with her early in the morning.

* * *

Two years after the delinquents first landed on earth, their village is completed, Clarke has two medical apprentices and often visits Nyko in TonDC, and Bellamy has stopped glaring holes in Indra's head every time he sees her. Clarke gets a tattoo that winds around her forearm, thick and black, with triangles dragging down the edge, to signify that she is a healer. She cuts her hair above her shoulders and Bellamy tells her it looks lovely.

The next year, Bellamy has added four new scars, Clarke's hands are calloused beyond all repair, and Monroe tells Clarke, beaming, about the pretty grounder girl she met at the annual fall feast. Octavia is pregnant and scared and Clarke hugs her and holds her as the younger girl shakes. Lincoln has a black eye and Bellamy's knuckles are bleeding and Clarke is terrified but she has to be strong for everyone else.

* * *

It's a girl, and they call her Willow. Bellamy cries and so does Lincoln, and Clarke laughs as the camp rejoices at the birth of the little girl with dark olive skin and a mop of thick, curly dark hair.

Bellamy wraps Clarke in a hug and she looks up at him, in a rare moment of peace, and she's looking up at him as he's looking down at her. Clarke doesn't know who kisses who, but it happens anyways. He doesn't pull back, and she doesn't run away.

* * *

They go back to the campfire, with Bellamy's arm around Clarke's waist and her arm around his. Raven cheers, Monty grins, Jasper dances around the fire with Harper, Nathan smiles, Monroe and her girlfriend Keena clap with Nyko, and Finn even manages a tight smile.

Clarke is well and truly happy.

* * *

 _._

* * *

 _"That's not what I want," Clarke says._

* * *

.

* * *

Clarke has left Camp Jaha and she doesn't know if she can ever get the red off her hands. She hides in the woods for three days before wondering what's beyond Trikru and Coalitions and mountains. She doesn't go through the dead zone and instead she heads the other way, passing mangrove swamps, wetlands, plains, eerie pine forests, and the reaching red oaks.

Her heart still aches and she still sleeps with knives and wakes with nightmares, but she threw away her gun and doesn't feel tethered to the ground anymore. It's a nice feeling. Clarke lets herself be eighteen again, and it feels good.

* * *

She finds different clans, some more peaceful, others more violent, and in one village she leaves with a tattoo on her back between her shoulder blades: the painted symbol of the ark. She carves kill marks into her skin after that, 58 of them. One for each of her dead delinquents. She doesn't count the grounders, she doesn't count the mountain men. She can't.

Her next tattoo wraps around her upper arm, and it's the symbol that stands for healer. She earned this one, saving the lives of three children with the fever, from a rural village that she was passing through.

* * *

A month and a half after leaving Camp Jaha, Clarke meets a nomadic tribe. There are two leaders, Miko and Adriana, and they invite Clarke to travel with them. She says yes. Clarke meets a girl her age, Kida, with ebony skin, grey eyes, and red hair, and Kida is the one who paints Clarke's next tattoo: the symbol of the tribe. Kida is her best friend, and a great hunting partner. She can't draw to save her life, which she tells Clarke cheerfully; but she can tell stories, which she does every night, in the circle of the tribe.

* * *

Clarke loves it, in a way, because they're all outcasts. Some have been banished, some have left, some have nothing to go back to. Some, like her, didn't have a specific purpose, and others wanted to see the world. She sees so many different skin tones and eye colours and hairstyles and tattoo colours in the first day that she wants to laugh, so she does. Kida has white tattoos that carve on one side of her face and down her back and all the way down to her right wrist. She tells Clarke one night that she comes from Desert Clan, originally, but then they killed her brother Yacob because he fell in love with the wrong person.

Clarke gets to know a young woman called Trishna, who ran from her tribe after they wanted her to cast out her deformed daughter. Holly is six years old now and has a lump of scar tissue that drags down over her eye and drags her mouth out to the side. Her remaining eye is a clear, vivid blue, and her hair is cornstarch blonde. Clarke thinks she's beautiful.

There is a man called Riku and his wife, Usha, and Clarke discovers that they came all the way from the remains of a city, far to the east and over the sea. Usha lets Clarke sketch her one evening, one hand on her swollen, pregnant belly, the lump that _should_ be her other hand resting beside it. Her hair is thick, and hangs in braids and dreadlocks, and Clarke thinks she's beautiful too. They _all_ are.

* * *

The only other children in the group are called Binns and Eden. Eden is a little thing, with big blinking brown eyes and pale skin, not yet two years old, and Binns has olive skin and hands too big for a three year old. Kida tells them stories each night, them and Holly, about how each star in the sky came to be. Clarke laughs a bit bitterly when Kida says there is a star missing, that fell from the sky not so long ago. She laughs because Kida says that star was the spirit of a kind warrior woman who flew into the heavens to save her children, the trees, from the sun burning them up. The irony hurts.

* * *

Clarke isn't sure whether or not the tribe knows that she is skaikru, but they never ask and she doesn't say anything. She sways in time and listens to Gloria singing at night, until her nightmares begin to fade and she can sing along with them. Vaego, a young man who can't be more than twenty-two, bangs on a makeshift drum, Clarke sings lowly to compliment Gloria's clear, husky voice, and everyone swings around a fire. Kida waltzes with Binns and points over to where Yavanna and Sam are cuddled up to each other, Yavanna's mother watching them with a smile, and Clarke is happy.

* * *

Three months after Clarke left Camp Jaha, her map is so large that it takes two people to hold it out in front of them. Her tribe is composed of thirty-odd people, her other forename has been inked to display stars, and her hair is long and braided. They travel freely, going wherever they please, staying away from conflict and treaties and allegiances. A new girl and her two brothers join the tribe, and their names are Feren, Thomas, and Ollie. Feren flirts with _everyone_ , though she is only fifteen, and they all laugh and ruffle her thick, messy brown hair.

One night, upon waking from a nightmare, Ollie tells her how he had to kill his fiancée, Rachel, after she became too ill to consider recovery. It is the first time Clarke lets herself talk about Finn, and it hurts less than she expected it would.

A man with scars over every inch of skin, Louie, teaches Clarke more fighting techniques, and David hands her a sword with a smile. Kida teaches her how to shoot a bow and arrow, and Adriana's husband, Eli, carves her a double-edged bone dagger. She kind of hates herself, because she's starting to move on.

* * *

They go through two abandoned cities, crumbling and dirty with dried blood and skeletal remains lining the streets. They fide guns, hidden in a store, and Clarke's chest tightens, but Miko tells them not to touch them.

Feren finds a raggedy stuffed bear and hands it to Holly, who Clarke has discovered is mute, and the little girl beams. Trishna smacks a kiss to Feren's cheek, and Feren immediately races off to find toys for Eden and Binns. Holly shows off her bear proudly, and it's the first time Clarke thinks that maybe it's okay to move on.

* * *

Feren is fire and noise and quick-thinking where Kida is calm and collected and dangerously soft, and Clarke loves them both. She ignores the way Feren reminds her of Raven, just like she ignores how Vaego looks like an older Monty when she squints, and the way Thomas reminds her of Nathan Miller, and the way Sam's personality is so much like her dad's.

They reach the sea, soon after, and it is vast and glittering and terrifying all at once. Binns, who has no family, brightens up and slashes in the waves. "Wada," he explains. "Wada." Clarke laughs and joins him. The clan debates crossing the ocean, heading for the island they can just see on the horizon, but Binns tells them sternly that bad men live across the water. Miko shrugs and swoops the little boy onto his shoulders, and they turn away from the sea.

* * *

They go through deserts, swamps, and wetlands, they go through forests and snowy mountains, and Clarke gets another tattoo, a pattern of swirling stars on her wrist, along with a boxy little thing hidden among the constellations. It's a tribute to the ark, in a way, but more than that it's Clarke's final goodbye to her father.

They meet a woman called Ava, who leads a group of Rangers with massive hounds at their sides, and Adriana greets one of their members with open arms. Clarke learns that they are far enough away from her old home that these people have never even heard of the mountain men. She feels free and light and it's amazingly refreshing.

Ava has three daughters and a son, who is Clarke's age. His name is Kavin, and they spend all day talking. Kavin tells her all he's seen and she learns that he wants to leave his Rangers, go beyond the woods that they have always protected. The tribe leaves in the morning, and Kavin comes with, bringing his wolf-hound, Illah.

Usha gives birth in a series of glowing, crystallised caves. Clarke is in charge, and Usha groans and bites down on rags as she crushes her husband's hand. Kida barks for Yeren to take the children a distance away, because they are scared, and Eli and an elderly woman called Tatiana kneel by Clarke throughout the long hours of labour. Usha gives birth to a live, healthy girl, and Clarke laughs in relief. Usha calls her Didi, and the only unusual thing about her is her almost-red eyes.

* * *

Four months after Clarke left Camp Jaha, she feels a surge of dread when she thinks she recognises the kind of trees that they are camped in. She checks a tree and bites down her panic when her suspicions are proved correct, and the symbol for Trikru is carved in the wood.

The next morning, one of Indra's patrols brings them before her. Gloria whispers to Yavanna and Usha about how _rough these men are, nyeh?_ Usha shushes her calmly, her eyes the only sign of her worry. Miko and Adriana tell the fierce Trikru leader that they are simply passing through, and Indra's eyes rake over the thirty-odd group of people warily. Miko shows her his clan tattoo in proof, and she allows them to stay the night in TonDC.

Clarke still stays in the shadows.

* * *

Feren looks at her a bit strangely and then shifts closer to her in an almost defensive move when Clarke tells her the name of the village, but Kavin shifts so his shoulder touches hers in a silent display of support.

Trikru tells them of the Skaikru, how they stay behind their electric fence and their big metal guns. Their lips curl at the mention of the Arkers, but when talking about the first Skaikru, admiration seeps into their voices. Clarke is proud of her old people, but she no longer longs to be a part of them.

The storytellers of TonDC tell them the story of the Griffin, Wanheda. Clarke is surprised when only some of her tribe seem at all surprised or like they are realising something. Kida sharpens her knife and glares at everyone.

Clarke is filled with warmth for her little family.

* * *

Because she's not Clarke Griffin, the girl who landed on earth from the sky. (The girl who just wanted to help, the girl who loved a boy whose heart was too big for him in the end, the boy who was loved by another.)

She's not Wanheda, the commander of death, the fearless warrior. (The girl whose hands and face and heart dropped with blood.)

She's not the Griffin, the girl who walked and danced among the tress, in tune with the earth and sky. (The girl who didn't know where to go or what to do, the girl more legend than truth.)

She's just Clarke. (And she likes it like that.)

* * *

They walk away the next morning, and Binns holds Clarke's hand and points and laughs at the big blue butterflies. She doesn't think of Finn, watching the little boy, she just thinks of Binns. And that's okay, she's okay. She's moving on. And that's okay too. She's happy enough.

* * *

 _._

* * *

 _"No," says Clarke. "That's not what I want." But her voice is weaker, just a bit._

* * *

.

* * *

Lexa doesn't betray them. Clarke doesn't commit genocide again. Emerson offers them a deal; their people save in return for the mountain men to be left alone, and the two women agree. After a moment, Clarke asks if Maya Vie can have one of the reserve marrow treatments from the mountain's storage. Emmerson's face sours, but he has two children and doesn't want them dead, and after Cage Wallace was murdered, Dante is back in charge. Dante is reasonable, to a point, so he agrees.

Bellamy leads their people out of the mountain and Clarke laughs in relief and runs up to him.

It works, too, because the grounders see her taking control, and her people see her saving them, and Bellamy sees her running to him.

He's carrying a heavily bleeding Fox, and as Clarke watches him desperately, before she is pulled away, she sees Fox being lowered from him and handed to medics from the ark.

Monty squeezes Clarke tightly and makes her shoulder wet, but she doesn't care, and he sticks by her side with Harper and Miller. Everyone is hugging her, weak and staggering and scared but it's okay because Clarke is there. Maya is there too, and Jasper rushes to Clarke and wraps her in a hug and breathes " _thank you thank you thank you_ ," and Clarke is so glad that her friends are okay. Octavia wraps her brother in her arms and he breathes her in and meets Clarke's eyes from across the clearing where she is standing tall beside Lexa. Clarke sees Raven collapsing into Wick's arms, a mechanic from mecha station, and hopes her friend is okay. She wants to go over, but she still has to establish her role in grounder culture, so she stays by Lexa, as much as she longs to check on her people.

* * *

Lexa clasps her forearm and smiles and Indra nods from behind her. Clarke knows that Miller, Monty, Monroe, and Harper are at her back, and _god_ , _she's missed them_.

Abby hugs her and laughs tearfully, and Kane, who has latched himself to Clarke's mother with shining eyes, gathers Clarke into his arms too. Clarke thinks she knows what is happening, and she is less bothered than she thought she would be. She's still bitter and upset at Abby, but she does love her mother. Abby cries into Clarke's shoulder, and Clarke wonders faintly if she'll always be the one offering support in her relationships.

* * *

When everyone has thanked her at least twice, she finds her way in front of Bellamy.

He smiles. "You did good here, Clarke," he says, and then Clarke is beaming, and she pulls herself into his arms. He's laughing throatily, chest rumbling, and Clarke closes her eyes and lets herself breathe for a moment.

Octavia and Lincoln appear by their sides, Lincoln by Clarke and Octavia by Bellamy. Lincoln shakes her hand when she's drawn back from Bellamy, and he tells her that she's done well with the treaty, and his people will respect her. Octavia has an arm slung around Bellamy's shoulders, and she meets Clarke's gaze, uncharacteristically uncertain, before she nods.

It's not forgiveness, but maybe it's acceptance. It's probably not _thanks_ , but maybe it's a truce. Whatever it is, it's good enough for now.

* * *

Fox doesn't make it through the night, and two other kids die from blood poisoning within the hour. Clarke stares at her red hands, sitting outside the Camp Jaha fence, and wonders if it was worth it. Fox was sweet and trusted Clarke to save her, and she couldn't. Does that make Clarke a healer, murderer, or liar?

Footsteps crunch next to her, and Clarke doesn't even look up. Bellamy sits next to her and silently takes her hands and wipes the blood off her fingers with a rag that Abby must have given him.

"I can't stay here," Clarke whispers. She doesn't belong here. She loves her mother, but Abby still, _still_ treats her like a child. Kane thinks she can suddenly do all their dirty work. The rest of the council respectfully avoid her, and the people seem to still think of her as either a reckless criminal or a pristine princess.

Her people are hurting, and so is she.

He keeps her hands in his and tilts his head, pursing his lips and staring into the forest.

"Bellamy-" he turns to her, the ghost of a smile on his lips.

"Me either," he says, and Clarke doesn't really know what to say so she doesn't say anything.

The ark knows that the kids are out of the mountain, but they don't know that the mountain isn't out of the kids. Monty and Harper cling to each other, Maya stares around her in terror and a bit of curiosity beside Jasper, Monroe carries her gun wherever she goes, and so does Nathan Miller. The ark thinks that these _criminals_ can go from survivors to children in an instant. The kids know better.

Together, they can be broken, but amongst the arkers they always have to be strong. And Clarke has been subjected to this twisted way of thinking for even longer than them, and she is _sick of it._

* * *

They leave two weeks after the mountain. Abby hugs her goodbye and Kane watches Clarke in worry, and Clarke and Bellamy take their people to Polis. Lexa lets them have a wide peace of land nearly two days journey from Camp Jaha, and they head off immediately.

It's an idealistic location. Bellamy thinks it's too good to be true and so does Clarke, but they're tired enough that they accept it with a smile. Lexa's negation included making the land farm-able so that they can trade, and Clarke wonders how they can turn the clearings into crops, but then one of the quieter delinquents points out a lake and the group spends the afternoon washing the dirt of their aching bodies and splashing each other.

A birch forest rings the area, and Bellamy takes it in with a critical eye, already pointing out to Clarke where they should start building a wall and what wood looks good for cabins. Clarke looks at him blankly for a moment and then shoves him underwater. He comes up splashing and spluttering indignantly and Clarke laughs.

* * *

They stay in tents for almost a month, which have been lined with furs to keep out the autumn chill, until there are twenty-five cabins all lined up. They're crude, small, and not exactly works of art, but they keep out most of the cold and they're secure. The teenagers take a while to get used to them, but it's nice to have an actual bed for once... even if they do miss the wind whistling simply because it's something familiar, and they sigh because though morning dew on the canvases wasn't comfortable, it was reassuring. But. Beds are nice, and Raven, who dragged Wick behind her, eventually gets hot water running in the med bay and mess hall.

The crop-growing is Monty and Jasper's field of expertise, and they fuss over seeds and planting widths and watering schedules as Maya smirks. Maya is doing okay, up on the ground. She misses her father, and her few friends who didn't hand her in, but she likes it, even if she doesn't really trust the Arkers. She tells Clarke she likes the bird calls of the morning and the colours in the sky best, and flowers. Maya _always_ has flowers woven into her hair, and Clarke isn't sure if Jasper gives them to her or if Maya has taken it upon herself to always be the best-smelling in their little village.

Clarke doesn't have a cabin, officially, and instead sleeps in a hammock in the med bay. She was supposed to bunk with Raven, but not-so-subtly shoved Wick inside in her place. She prefers being closer too what she's good at. Bellamy complains constantly, but doesn't try to convince her to move in with anyone.

* * *

Octavia and Lincoln show up the day before the first snowfall, and Bellamy welcomes them with a smile and open arms. Clarke has her arms folded and she smiles at Lincoln. Raven hugs Octavia, who laughs nervously, but Clarke doesn't talk to the youngest Blake for a while more.

(Or maybe, Octavia doesn't talk to her.)

It doesn't matter, because they're both in the wrong. Octavia overreacted and doesn't try to understand Clarke's actions, but Octavia was Clarke's friend once and Octavia feels betrayed.

Their vow of silence ends when Lincoln gets the fever. Octavia screams at Clarke, Raven pushes her out, and when Lincoln recovers Octavia cries and hugs Clarke and apologises again and again.

* * *

Clarke loves the winter, even though everyone is always sick, and she sketches whenever she can. Which isn't often, but oh well.

Come summer, and their crops are thriving. The grounder villages nearby are teaming to them, and Clarke visits Polis once a month for the clan meeting. She gets a tattoo, and though she's isn't the first in the group, everyone grins at her for weeks. It's of what they've decided their clan symbol is, a circle with two 'v's dragging down and overlapping through the centre. Harper, Maya, and Clarke designed it, and have various explanations for when people ask.

("It could be the mountain and the valley," Harper suggests. "Or, hey, the joining of skaikru and trikru. The children of two separate worlds."

"The decent from sky to earth," offers Maya, less timid than she used to be.

"Breaking tradition, paving our own path," hums Clarke thoughtfully. "Or maybe just a weird star.")

They call themselves _Briekgeda_ , which means _free_ _nation_ , and it's fitting.

Bellamy gets the same tattoo in the same place, the inner wrist, and then it's a trend.

* * *

Someone decides it has to be earned and people latch onto the idea with fervour, displaying their wrists proudly. Harper gets hers after successfully starting a forge with Monroe and Fillip, melting iron down into nails to secure the cabins. Raven gets hers when she gets the walkie-talkies working properly, large range included. Miller guns down an elk and inks his wrist with a smile. Monty manages to grow a crop of corn and grins at Clarke from across camp. Even Maya and Wick eventually join in, Maya simply for helping the 100 back in the mountain, Wick for finding a new horde of bullets and swords hidden in a bunker.

It's kind of great. (Abby and Kane disprove. Nobody cares.)

Clarke is happy, and so is everyone else.

* * *

.

* * *

 _"You're_ wrong _," says Clarke, and she tastes blood on her lips._

* * *

.

* * *

Clarke wakes up on the ark. She stares disbelievingly down at earth, through the window, and then at her hands, which are unscarred and uncalloused and nothing like she remembers them to be. Her father hugs her from behind and Clarke tries not to cry and hyperventilate. Her mother kisses her forehead and leaves for work. Wells arrives with a chessboard and a determined glint in his eyes.

"You're going down, Griffin," he laughs, and Clarke shakes her head. She hugs him, hard. "I love you, Wells," she says. "You're my best friend, okay? Don't you- don't you forget that." He shrugs and pats her shoulder.

"Okay," he agrees. "Of course. I love you too." Clarke's heart _aches_.

(Has it all just been a dream-)

She blinks, and she's back on earth.

* * *

Finn is flirting, and she pushes him away. "You have a girlfriend," she says, and the words taste bitter on her tongue. Finn looks shocked and _wounded_. Miller high-fives her.

Raven comes to earth and Clarke hugs her and says it's because she's glad that someone she could make it to the earth. (It's because Clarke can barely remember her smile.)

They light the flares early, and there's no bodies that burn the sky that night.

(She's been given a chance to make things _right_ \- to _fix_ things, to _fix_ her _friends_ -)

Clarke laughs, and she's in mount weather.

* * *

She drags her friends out. She shows them Anya, chained up, and leads them outside. She doesn't feel bad when Jasper sighs and says he's disappointed he never got to know Maya better. She ignores the way her heart squeeze when Monty claps his friends' shoulder. (They don't do that in her time.) Bellamy slings his arm over her shoulders and presses his lips into her hair. Octavia hugs her and Abby does too. Clarke watches her friends and smiles.

(Wait, wait, what's happening-)

Clarke kisses Harper's cheek and she's in the city of light.

* * *

Raven and Wick swing their hands and Raven doesn't limp. Octavia rides on Lincoln's back and laughs when she sees Clarke. "Hey, C!" She calls, and Clarke's eyes water. Bellamy smiles at her, holding hands with a curly-haired woman who waves shyly. Abby and Kane have their arms around each other casually. Lexa is at Clarke's side and smiles easily.

Clarke opens her mouth and it's all gone.

* * *

 _"What'll it be, Clarke?" ALIE's sympathetic voice is in Clarke's ear and before the woman can react Clarke has wrenched the chip off her hand. ALIE shrieks and disappears. Clarke's hands are shaking and burning, and the palm where the chip lay is bleeding._

 _Her eye is swollen shut and Clarke knows her face will be heavily bruised. Her clothes are torn. Her legs shake. Her head pounds and blood, sweat, and tears are all mixed together on her face._

* * *

This _is reality. Reality sucks._


End file.
